The Department of Veterans Affairs is preparing to fire up to 80,000 workers in the coming weeks in the last phase of the Trump administration efforts to remodel the Federal Work Force, according to an internal memorandum obtained by ABC News.
The Secretary of VA, Doug Collins, later confirmed the planned cuts in a video published in X, saying that the agency points to a 15% workforce cut that could begin in the coming months.
Collins said that the VA will continue to hire for open positions of “critical mission”, while the agency is reduced in other areas, so that “medical care and benefits for VA beneficiaries are not affected.”
“We regret anyone who loses their work, and it is extraordinarily difficult for me as a VA leader and their secretary, to make this type of decisions. But the federal government does not exist to use people. It exists to serve people,” said Collins.
A sign marks the headquarters of the Department of Veterans Affairs in Washington, DC, on February 20, 2025.
Brian Snyder/Reuters
The main Republicans and Democrats expressed concerns about the plans and how they could be implemented.
The president of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, said about X that “the Department of Veterans Affairs needs a reform, but current efforts to reduce the department and increase efficiency must be made in a more responsible way.”
“I hope he will work with Congress for the correct size of the VA workforce and allow us to legislate the necessary changes,” he added.
Senator Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., The main Democrat of the panel, criticized the announcement, saying that “the plan prioritizes the profits of the private sector on the care of the veterans, balancing the budget in the back of those that served.”
In a memorandum of March 4, the leaders of the Senior agency, the chief of Cabinet Christopher Syrek said that the “initial objective of the VA is to return to our strength numbers of the end of 2019 of 399,957 employees” as part of the wave of large -scale shots and reorganization of the agencies.
“Go, in association with our potential Doge clients, it will move aggressively, while taking a pragmatic and disciplined approach to identify and eliminate waste, reduce management and bureaucracy, reduce the footprint and increase efficiency in the workplace,” Syrek said in the memorandum obtained by ABC News.
The VA has already said that it has dismissed 2,400 test workers, although some were subsequently hired to the agency, workers and legislators told ABC News.
The agencies must present the first part of their reorganization plans, with proposals for possible dismissals, to the Office of Personnel Management before March 13.
The VA did not immediately respond to a message in search of comments.
Even when the VA prepares to cut its workforce, the agency has faced setbacks in other cost reduction efforts.
On Wednesday, Collins announced that the agency had saved $ 900 million by canceling more than 500 “non -critical and duplicate” contracts, after initially stating, the agency had identified $ 2 billion in contracts for possible savings.
The agency has faced internal resistance to the contract cuts, some of which directly support the attention and medical facilities, and have reversed the cancellation of many of the initial lots of more than 800 originally identified for cuts.
